


Doing the Legwork

by joudama



Series: Why They Get On [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, bored
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joudama/pseuds/joudama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft Holmes is quite certain he knows what it is his brother sees in John Watson. And, more importantly, what John Watson sees in his brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doing the Legwork

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't bored at work this time! ...I was bored at home and not wanting to clean. ^^;; Oh, we all knew this one was coming; don't know who I was fooling, thinking I'd be able to just write the two. Last one, and lol, I actually had to Look Shit Up for this one.
> 
> Unbeta'd as always 'cause I'm lazy~.

Mycroft Holmes is _quite_ certain he knows what it is his brother sees in John Watson. And, more importantly and on some level more worrisome, what it is that John Watson sees in his brother.

One Dr John Watson, fmr Captain of Her Majesty's Royal Army Medical Corp, is, to be quite vulgar, an adrenaline junkie with an addictive personality. He craves danger much like Sherlock once craved drugs in his system (a weakness still indulged, forgivably, with nicotine, and Mycroft is certain that John ensures that is all his brother indulges in; John has been as... _intimately_ \- ah, the bonds of family - acquainted with addicts Mycroft himself; well enough to disapprove in a way that is fixed and unmovable and on this point he will not budge, for all his misses his own addiction, that his own body craves its own natural chemical mix of adrenaline as much as any of the addicts John has known crave their external chemicals). He even turns into a trembling wreck, of a sorts, once the danger is gone. The tremble of his hand is no different than the way Sherlock's lip, such an unpleasant and distasteful memory, and extremities would tremble from withdrawal. John needs his battlefield, and Sherlock needs someone to keep him from his own _Todestrieb_.

Two addicts, enabling each other with no idea of it, which is why he keeps an eye on them - he is loathe to do his own legwork, but family is family, and Sherlock requires a vigilant eye. 

It is not _Eros_ , in the rather laughable way as so many mistakenly think, that binds his brother and Dr John Watson. It is _Thanatos_. They both seek death in their own way, and thankfully for Mycroft's very sanity, their two urges cancel each other out insofar as they keep each other alive so they can chase after Death another day. They may both wish in their own unconscious ways to die in order to feel the thrill of living, but they also wish very much very consciously for the other to stay alive. They both seem to think the world is a more interesting place with the other in it. In that way, perhaps it is a touch of _Eros_ , tedious and flawed though Freudian thought may be, making Mycroft loathe to use it even though it does seem to fit in some small way here, insofar as it is a drive towards life and _survival_. They rely on each other to keep from getting themselves killed. Sherlock is willing to put his life of the line to prove he is so very clever, and John Watson gets in the way to put his on the line instead because he needs his adrenaline hit. They push themselves into harm's way so they other can push them out. It is a vicious cycle, and perhaps not the healthiest of lives, but it is one in which they both, addicts in their own way, acknowledged or not, _thrive_.

...or perhaps, he thinks as the two of them stab at each other's food with their chopsticks ( _āiyā, chīxiàng tài nánkàn le_ ) and stick their tongues out at each other before John wins and pops a dumpling in his mouth with gloating relish and his brother goes into a _pout_ , all clear as day through the CCTV cameras pointed at the shabby yet excellent Chinese restaurant they often frequent when Sherlock deigns to eat, and feeling a headache blooming at his temples, he is overthinking it, and it it may simply be the fact the two of them are both man-children with the emotional maturity of _five year olds_.

**Author's Note:**

> Hee - yeah, I figure Mycroft speaks multiple languages, and one of them would be fluent Chinese (rising world superpower, and all that). So "āiyā, chīxiàng tài nánkàn le" (哎呀, 吃相太难看了) is "Ugh, such bad table manners."


End file.
